The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe Without Design

Great book with a great title. Richard Dawkings is an absolute master in using controversy and philosophical disputes to smuggle fundamental knowledge about evolutionary biology that could otherwise be seen as intimidating or just plain boring by a layman. Just look at some of teh chapters titles: "Explaining the very improbable", "Origins and miracles", "Explosions and spirals", "The one true tree of life", "Doomed rivals". As a minimum, you must concede this guy is a master communicator. How could you not be interested in finding out what this chapters are about...Anyhow, all the chapters in this book are about giving you a detailed, understandable account of how evolution and natural selection works, and clearing out any doubts you might have conceived or received by others.It's masterfully written, fascinating and engaging. What surprises me is why all the "religious" fuss abut this book is about. This is not a book defending atheism, or a book trying to demostrate the non existence of God. No real scientist, atheist or not, would ever dream to do such a thing. This is just about explaining reality through rational thinking, something that any sane person should approve of. Even deeply religious people should not be afraid of this book, or of Darvin's theory. What repulsive kind of a plastic God would be the one that literally makes a man out of clay and pops it on earth just like a kid pushes a barbie doll in her little fake house. Or jumping from biology to astronomy what kind of claustrophobic world would have given to us if the enciant view of the universe was a little ball with the "spheres" rotating around it.I find that those views are the really offensive towards God, so if you believe in God you should be so much more relieved and happy as nature reveals some of her complexities and her beauty, instead of forcing the limited and obtuse human view to God.Besides, there are far more serious arguments that question the plausibility of God than natural selection and who the first men were..for example all the sorrow and pain that come to us men from time to time because of wars, accidents, natural disasters..And even if most of these plagues can be traced back more or less directly to men themselves.. how about children born with deformities or terrible illnesses that doom them to death or to a crippled life. Those are way more troubling mysteries to a believer than natural selection theory...Then why Darwin's theory is so adversed by some exponent fo the various churches? Well my idea is that it is one of the few fundamental scientific theories that is at the same time so illuminating and so simple that everyone can appreciate it an fully understand it.And for this reason it leaves you hungry for more truth and more reasoning and promotes love and passion for scientific inquiry and reasoning.. And those who detain the power never like the idea of having to give and account of that power to intelligent, rational, inquisitive minds.So in the end, in a sense, especially if there actually is a God, you better read this book and use it to enrich your culture and open your mind. If you are an atheist, you will love life better, if you believe in God you will appreciate his ways even more.

The Blind Watchmaker is a fantastic read whether you believe in evolution or not. Dr. Richard Dawkins has made the theory of evolution understandable to me even though I am not a scientist and have only a limited knowledge of what the theory actually is. I got out of this book exactly what I was hoping to get, which is a greater understanding of what an evolutionist really believes, which can get skewed when hearing arguments from the other side. Both sides (evolutionists & creationists) like to insult the positions of the other without really understanding or even caring about what those arguments really are. Both sides take the other out of context and rather than engage in debate seek to question the credentials, sanity, and integrity of the other. Both sides are guilty of this behavior and both sides have done harm to their own arguments in the process.For the evolutionist, this book is a wonderful resource because it lays out some complex topics in easy to comprehend detail. However, it does not prove anything. It offers the typical "must have beens" and "it is likely that..." and so forth that so often accompany these unprovable arguments. Rather than try to convince you that this theory is less solid than the scientific community would like to admit, I would suggest that you read it with a healthy dose of skepticism. Ask the question: If such and such happened...how did it happen? Isn't this what characterizes great scientists anyway? Dr. Dawkins offers suggestions on how things might have happened and seems to think that just because he has proposed a scientific sounding hypothetical that the theory is proven. I would ask the reader to go deeper and seek the truth. Insist on proof. Blind acceptance is foolish and entirely unscientific. At least, that is what the scientists tell us Christians, isn't it?For the creationist, I would suggest reading this book so that you have a fuller understanding of what the evolution arguments really are. So often we are arguing points that are not really being made by evolutionists, and we come off as being disingenuous, misquoting, and even lying about the things we claim the other side is saying. There is plenty to be debated in the actual arguments of evolutionists so let's try to educate ourselves on our adversaries. It will make our arguments stronger, and force them to defend their real positions rather than easy to knock down straw men. We ought not be afraid of their scientific positions if we truly believe we are right. For myself, I freely admit to bringing a religious bias to the debate. Everybody brings their preconceptions with them everywhere they go. There is no such thing as complete objectivity. We ought not pretend to be objective (either side) because we are not. What we can do is be respectful and present arguments based on what is actually being said.

Some days ago I received the book and, to be honest, I have never ordered used books on Amazon before. So to say, I was prepared for the worst outcome :) Turned out that the book was in excellent condition. I am pleasantly surprised and will definitely order next book the same way to save some money. ☀️

Adoro este libro. Y está escrito en un modo que hace la lectura súper agradable

Comprei pra dar de presente ao meu marido. Ele gostou muito, já estava interessado nesse livro a um bom tempo.

Extremely interesting.

This book is about evolution: it is described as a very large amount of steps of very small improvements. Richard goes into great detail to help us understand how it works. I enjoyed reading it as it takes theory a step further and I regret having not read this book years earlier. Richard follows logic if we accept A then it means the following. He also explores the opposite if A isn't true. He (and Darwin) logically rejects evolution as having anything to do with divine intervention because if that is needed to explain any steps in evolution it means the theory is false.He makes the reader understand that this process is so complex and played at multiple levels - from genes and cells, to species to planetary conditions - and over a time scale that the human mind cannot comprehend. It may seem magical or divine but it really isn't. When reading the chapters about this I had to think about a conversation at the start of Deep Space Nine about time: "What comes before now is not different than what is now or what is to come. It is one's existence". If we were to meet such a being we would not understand this with our human mind. For a human a decade is quite long, on geological time scale 60,000 years is an instant. We look at the animals and plants today and we should realize they are all the outcome of a billion years long evolutionary process.The fossil record is extremely limited, so we miss many steps and sometimes we aren't even looking in the right area. In Dawkins' view life does not have a meaning - 42 might be the right answer after all. It's interesting as recently I learned about another theory that looked at life as a way to recirculate nutrition - each animal and plant is part of a system. Dawkins would reject that and the system is there because of life. He spent the last chapter debunking 'alternative theories'. In a way it's quite academic but it does show clearly where Richard stands.Unfortunately he does not know how life started and he postulates some theories that sound the same as how we explain the universe using terms like dark energy and dark matter - it could be true but for now it's not more than an educated guess. I understand that this is still one of the large mysteries of life. As the book was written a few decades ago, some of the examples that Richard uses sounds dated - it does not take anything away from his message, but I can see my daughter for example not being able to understand what he means with a laser disc or a DC-8. If you are religious and have an open mind I would recommend reading it - Dawkins is not against religion in a way that he condemns religious people, it's more that it is not the right explanation for how life is today. There is no Watchmaker at work.